The Great Falling Away, Part 2 by Ed Pruitt

Galatians 3:1-3

The Great Falling Away
Part 2
Pastor Ed Pruitt
Amarillo Church of God

1 Corinthians 3:1-3
1 Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to mature Christians. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life.

2 I had to feed you with milk and not with solid food, because you couldn’t handle anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready,

3 for you are still controlled by your own sinful desires. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your own desires? You are acting like people who don’t belong to the Lord.

Galatians 3:1-3
1 Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has cast an evil spell on you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death as clearly as though I had shown you a signboard with a picture of Christ dying on the cross.

2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you believed the message you heard about Christ.

3 Have you lost your senses? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?

Let us bow our heads in a word of prayer.

I want to continue on with the second part of our message this morning and to do just a quick review.

We found out last week that too many Christians are living a life this morning that is far below the standard that God wants us to live.

Ands we also found that when we study the bible we can note in more than one epistle Paul points to the reason that the congregation were living beneath their privileges.

Aman, in both scriptures that we read and we could read others my friend, were fashioned in the falling away of the morning time church, he had one reason for it and we want to study it this morning.

They were not living as Christians ought to live and the reason that they were not living as Christians ought to live they were trying to operate by the power of the flesh instead of by the power of the spirit.

And then we finished up with the thought that Jesus is on this side of the Cross!

He is a Spiritual Christ, a resurrected Christ, He don’t any longer dwells with people He dwells in them!

Everyone, and when moves in thank God they become Spiritual beings, there animated by the Spirit of Christ through the Holy Spirit!

So the Galatians begun in the Spirit!

That is where every true church of God begins!

That is where every true child of God begins!

In the Spirit!

Oh some one might say, oh I don’t believe it!

Go to Romans the 8th chapter Romans 8:8-9
8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

He went on to say that there are only two groups of people in the world!

We are either in the flesh, or in the Spirit!

As long as you are in the flesh, you cannot please God
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you or the Spirit of Christ.

So I am just like Paul this morning, if you want to take me back to a corporal Christ that walked on the earth and I’ll say.

I am determined not to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified!

Aman, oh Brother Pruitt you can’t say that.

It’s right there!

Paul went on to say, I speak in demonstration of the Spirit and the Power!

The proof my friend, is not in words, but changed lives!

This is our greatest need this morning.

Real changed lives!

Men and women who have been miraculously lifted from that level of living in the flesh to a place of living in the Spirit!

And I mean really living in it!

Somebody said, I possess the Holy Ghost!

Well, Paul said if you live by the Spirit, then walk in it!
Let it get into your everyday walk!

Aman!

Let your life be lived in demonstration of the Power and Spirit of God!

Friend, you start living that way and you are going to catch somebody’s eye!

You won’t have to put a sign on your back!

I told a man that not long ago, he had stuff all over his shirt.

And I said man if you just live it, you don’t need to put signs on you!

No, no, no, Brother, there will be something stick out all over you when you start living in the demonstration of the Power and Spirit of God!

Not doing what you can do but doing what God can do!

What you and I can do is not good enough!

That is why Jesus came, to lift us from the level of what we can do and put it up to the level of what God can do with a man and women that yields their life to them!

I am here to tell you that God stands ready to work miracles as never before!

I was listening to a tape this week and heard about a man that was saved and when he gave his testimony about how it was a miracle for him to become saved in just a nick of time.

He told about how he was bound with dope and alcohol he was deep in sin, so deep in sin my friend, that the only way out was to just give up everything.

He had to give up his job because it was crooked and he gave up everything.

But God changed him in a second of a time, thank God and made a new creature out of him and now he is preaching the gospel.

And a man like that was asked one time, he had been an alcoholic and deep in sin and men on the job, you know how they do, make fun of the things of God.

They call you a Jesus freak and all of those things.

So they asked him, they said man, do you actually believe in all of them miracles that the bible talked about?

Do you actually believe that Jesus turned water into wine?

The man stopped for a second and then he said, I don’t know whether he changed water into wine but I do know that He changed beer into furniture.

He said that he used to spend everything that he had into drinking and now I am buying furniture and groceries, clothing for the kids.

Aman, these are the kind of miracles that people today need to see.

They can raise up against the bible and they do that, but friend, when you live the life, and you defiantly demonstrate the power and the Spirit of God, there isn’t anything that they can say!

Paul said it will even convince the gainsayer.

We need that convincing power!

Oh, I pray that God will help us this morning and open our eyes to the grave danger that we stand in.

What is one of the greatest dangers that we face this morning?

Trying to finish in the flesh!

What God started in the Spirit!

Friend, it can really happen just as sure as we are here.

I say that Paul sets forth the truth here in Galatians the 3rd chapter at the beginning of the Christian live is in the Spirit, in receiving the Spirit.

Somebody said, well you just say that’s the beginning.

No, verse 3, Galatians 3:3
3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

That’s the beginning!

There is no real beginning of the Christina life, no beginning of the true Church of God without the Spirit coming in to our lives!

It’s the Spirit that gives life.

Certainly the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses faith and His blood cleanses from all sin, but it is the Spirit that gives life, it is the Spirit that quickens us, it is the Spirit that makes a new creature out of us, it’s the Power of the Holy Spirit that changes us.

So Galatians had begun in the Spirit.

Aman!

See friend, we can talk about and separate biblical terms it’s being done today.
But I just want to preach a simple gospel.

I want to say justified men as we call them, born again people, can’t live only by the Holy Spirit!

Get this, this morning!

The beginning of the true Christian life is to receive the Holy Spirit, we must be reminded you receive the Holy Ghost you must live according to His guidance and live in His Power if you ever are to be Spiritual!

Aman!

May God help us this morning!

I say we need to ask ourselves the question, we could look at many scriptures Galatians 5:25
25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

And again in Romans 8:13
13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

My friend, to be Spiritual we have got to have a Spiritual beginning.

Paul asked the question, did you receive the Holy Ghost when you believed?
They said no, we never even heard there was a Holy Ghost.

Aman, my friend, pointing us right back to this beginning, I want to make it plain.

I say, did, and does His Spirit bear wittiness with your spirit this morning?

God gave us the Holy Spirit with the intention that our lives would be lived everyday in the Power of the Spirit!

Let’s face it this morning church, there is no coasting.

We can’t live a Godly life one half hour without the Power of the Holy Spirit!

The sooner that we learn to tell God that, my, my, my, how dependant we are.

I repeat again, we cannot live a Godly life, we cannot be Spiritual one half hour without the Power of the Holy Spirit!

See, you as a person, you may live consistent, you may live irreproachable as far as man looking on you.

Virtue and diligence service and yet not live a life acceptable to God!

You have got to find a standard higher than what your wife thinks about you!
What your children thinks about you!

What the preacher thinks about you!

No I believe that faithful Pastors will be faithful to you.

But beyond all of that they may overlook something in your life!

We must live acceptable to God!

And God ordained, in His Great Plan, and the reason that He did it because it was impossible to live without it!

There is no Spiritual life without the Holy Ghost!

Living and working guiding and directing our lives!

Paul said in Romans the 12th chapter and the 1st verse when he told us to present our bodies, he is saying nothing more than he wants us to give it our all.

See, when you present your body, you are presenting your eye’s, your hands, your feet, your presenting senses, passions, fears and go right on and talk about that which makes up the body.

And He says to give it a living sacrifice.

This isn’t a once and for all deal that you do sometime at the altar.

This is an everyday thing.

Right back to prayer again.

See this is the thing that has got us in trouble over the land.

We take all of these experiences as a one shot deal, we got it.

We were sanctified over 30 years ago someone might say.

I want you to see this presenting of ourselves to God is a daily something.

Come on, we must take up our cross daily and we must present ourselves a living sacrifice.

What does a living sacrifice mean?

Everyday!

See the sacrifice in the Old Testament they killed them they were dead that was all!

But we present ourselves a living sacrifice, repeated, sure as we live!

I presented myself to God this morning!

I have told you before that it is just as easy to roll out of bed and onto my knees, as it is on my feet!

And there offer myself to God afresh!

Lord there is lots of things that need to be done but you know what needs to be done you know where I need to go what I need to do who I can help!

Present yourself a living sacrifice acceptable unto God!

Which is your reasonable service!

Somebody says you are preaching too high your getting too far out!

I am preaching on the churches reasonable service!

Something that’s reasonable, something that every member must adhere to!

I am going to tell you right now, if there would be a lot more people on their knees in the morning, presenting themselves a living sacrifice,

There would be a lot more sick visited, there would be a lot more unsaved in our community invited and brought out to church.

The trouble of it is we claim to be Christians and we get up and go on our way, and say Lord go with us and protect us and don’t let nothing happen to us.

Well you can do that, but you can’t do that and be Spiritual!

Now I can see that some of you lost interest way back there and the reason that you lost interest is because you don’t have the principal.

You go down to the bank, there ain’t no interest unless you have principal!

And you get interest according to the principal!

Aman!

The same things true right here, brother it’s the principal that gives us interest, deep interest.

I am talking about being Spiritual!

I say this danger falls upon everyone of us.

The Galatians had begun in the Spirit but they fell, if you will read the whole chapter the whole book of Galatians.

They had felled to Judaism teachers.

That told them that they ought to be circumcised, they began to seek a religion with external observances.

And the minute that they began to put the pressure or the value on the external observances they lost the real value of the Spirit of God in here (their heart).

Brother, salvation don’t rest in any external observance.

I repeat again, Christianity is Christ Crucified in the heart!

What is the hope in Glory?

Christ in you!

That’s the hope of Glory and if He is in there thank God, there will be ordnances that you keep, there will be lot’s of things that you do but they won’t be external.

Aman, observances that you just keep through the flesh and I want to say this morning this is still a danger.

Come on, you can come to Church you can sing, you can pay your tithe, you can wash feet, and yet my friend be operating under the power of the flesh.

The Spirit of God not prompting a bit of it.

I have actually been to feet washing services there are not to many but the Church of God that do that anymore, so you know that it was in the Church of God.

I actually looked on peoples faces and could tell that they were doing it externally, they were doing it because they felt that they had to.

Now Church of God there are externals that we can keep.

We can fall to the place that we feel that we are keeping them, my friend, and because of it were saved, were God’s people.

Paul went on to say in Galatians the 6th chapter when these conditions fall upon you and you begin to follow externals, you will find that the leaders, glory in your flesh!

Come on, you will fall to the flesh and the leaders glory in your flesh.

What are you talking about someone might say.

They will do anything imaginable to get a big crowd.

And the whole Glorying is not that five people got saved, but that there were five hundred out to church today!

Now come on, they glory in your flesh!

Just so you are there in body.
Whether you got a real experience with God, whether you are living for God, whether you are Spiritual!

They could care less about that!

They Glory in your flesh!

They glory in the fact that 500 hundred came in the flesh to service today.

And that type will do almost anything to fill their church, anything, but preach the Word of God, like it is!

Come on, every kind of gimmick, every kind of scheme, and what’s all of the excitement?

Come on, no excitement because somebody got saved, or somebody got healed!

But because they had 500 in church today!

Aman, it’s so anyway.

Paul went right on in the 12th verse of the 6th chapter of Galatians, Galatians 6:12-18
12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.

13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.

14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

15 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.

16 And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

17 From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

18 Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

They become zealous of the externals of religion with little or no regard to real piety, real living!

Aman, I pray that God will help us to see that things that are going on among us where people are pretending to promote religion,

They are the Church’s greatest enemy!

To many of these conditions, nothing has been more destructive to the interest of true religion, than men citing and party making and working these schemes that are being worked in so many cases.

Brother, I am still old fashioned, but I believe that if I lift up Jesus Christ, he will draw all men unto Him!

All of them won’t get saved, that didn’t all get saved that came to Him in His day, but He will draw them unto Him, where they will hear the gospel, have opportunity.

Yes sir, just as sure as we are, may God help us my friend, so we speak of religious flesh, my friend, the human nature, the human will and human that can be active in religion even after your converted.

I in my own strength can try to serve God.

I in my own strength can even attempt to preach!

This thing is dangerous!

I can be very diligent, I can work hard and all the time work by the human flesh, not the Spirit!

We can be shunted this morning from the Holy Ghost line to the line of the flesh.

A preacher may be diligent in his ministry, make a great sacrifice, be a great thinker, write books, be a great help to others and not be Spiritual!

Come on!

Why do you bring them things up some one might say?

Well today, when we don’t get our judgment straight we begin to judge men by some of these things that I have just mentioned.

Aman, just as Sampson wist not that the Spirit of God had left him, and when the test came, he found out how weak that he was.

As the scripture is written, they know not that they are weak, poverty strict on as far as Spirituality is concerned.

What are you talking about someone might say?

I am telling you that it can come on you and you don’t know it.

The only way that you will know it is that you will set under the true teaching of the Gospel, let God shine the light down on you, truly show you your condition.

As I said many times, He only shows it to you because He wants to help you.

I have often asked the question, why is there so little conviction?

Why aren’t we seeing more converting power through preaching of God’s Word?

Every time that I sought and I prayed, God would bring me back to this one thing.

The convincing and the converting power is through the Holy Spirit, we must preach the Word with the Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven.

He is the convincing portion, He’s the converting part, just as sure as we are here.

Oh, how many times we have asked this question to our self, why is there so little results for eternity?

Why do so many people come to the altar, only live a week or so for God?

Why are they up and down and in and out?

Why isn’t there more settling in their lives for eternity?

I am here to tell you my friend, it all comes back to one place, a lack of the demonstration and the power of the Holy Spirit.

It takes the Holy Spirit to convince you, it takes the Holy Spirit to convert you, it takes the Holy Spirit to settle you, takes the Holy Spirit to mature you!

Aman, I say the answer to all of these things and many other questions, is the absence of the Power of the Holy Spirit, the flesh and human energy has taken it’s place!

Just as with the Galatians, the Corinthians, we could read others, Peter’s epistles, my friend, the same story.

John’s, 1st , 2nd and 3rd John, who was he writing to?

A people that had fallen!

And when they fell to the level of the flesh, then they came subjective to all kinds of false teachings.

False Christ’s, false Prophets come in among them, come on, and they were led away, this way, that way and the other way.

Why?

I want to tell you again that it takes the Holy Ghost to bring the church together, takes the Holy Ghost to keep the Church together.

Any of us can go astray, we can be led astray without the Holy Spirit of God!

John, made it true to those people in 1st John the 2nd chapter and he let that little group that hadn’t fallen, hadn’t been led away and he let them know how they stood!

He said, you have got an unction, down inside, from the Holy One!

That unctioning Power of the Holy Spirit in our life as Jesus said, when He’s come, He will guide you into all truth!

He will guide you away and around everything that’s false, my friend, and when we lose His precious presence our knowledge will not hold us!

Aman, through the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Well somebody said, what are the proofs, or indications that we have left off the Spirit and started to work in the flesh?

Alright, we could take a long shot first.

Religious self efforts always end in sinful flesh.

Brother, when we leave off from the Spirit, we will begin to raise up again the Word of God, certain portions of it.

Feel that it isn’t necessary.

And the end is always the same.

We end up, my friend, in sinful flesh!

Just as Galatians was striving to be justified by works, that wasn’t their worst part.

Their worst part, they were quarreling, in danger of devouring one another.

Who are you talking about?

People that have been Spiritual, loved one another, cooperated together, worked together.

Now they were quarreling, fussing, ready to devour one another.

Twelve times in that letter, he told them of their lack of love!

How come they lacked love?

My friend, they had fallen, from a work of the Spirit to a work of the flesh!

Love is the first fruit of the Spirit!

They had fallen!

And over and over Paul reminded them, my friend, more than twelve times.

He said in Galatians 4:10-11
10 Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

11 I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

Aman, my, my, my I say that there is a lack of the high standard of integrity and Godliness today in too great a way.

Far too much unloving ness, sharpness, bitterness, envy, jealousy, sensitiveness, pride.

None of these are the marks of the presence of the Lord in your life!

They are marks that you are living by the flesh!

Flesh got hurt, and you retaliated!

Aman, God says vengeance is Mine!

Don’t avenge any man!

Somebody does you wrong, do them good!

We should never try to get even, stay uneven!

Aman, see we can’t take vengeance in our hand and follow Him who was Crucified, laid His life down!

Well Brother Pruitt, it is just so hard, when people do this and do that and you didn’t do anything wrong.

Now come on, you done wrong to suffer for it, you are just getting buffeted for your own faults.

You have got that coming.

But if you do right, defiantly do right and suffer for it, then you are suffering for Christ and the cause of Christ!

Don’t avenge, God says vengeance is Mine!

And it is His, and He will repay, if there is anything that needs to be repaid.

I am so glad that you can live this way, I am glad for the day that I learned that I don’t have to fight mine own battles.

Aman, if the battle arises, just go home and tell it to Jesus.

Let Him take care of it!

Aman, and He will take care of it, just as sure as we are here.

Oh, God help us this morning.

So there are too many marks, too many marks.

Paul said that he bore on his body the marks of Jesus.
What do you mean somebody might say?

He suffered with Him.

He had fellowship with His sufferings.

And if you live for God, you will fellowship Christ sufferings.

And I want to add to that, the closer you try to live for God, the more you will suffer.

Come on,

See there are too many today that say I can’t take anymore, take it away.

But that isn’t the Lords way of dealing.

See, when He passes out things, He tells you that if you will be faithful in the small things, He will make you faithful over the large things.

Come on, if you take care of five talents, you can’t retire, He is going to give you ten!

That means more work than before.

Aman, see it’s a growth.

Progress, and I want to repeat,
Somebody said, that I just try so hard and the harder that I try the more that I am mistreated.

That’s the way that it works!

That’s the way that it works!

That’s the way that it works!

Aman, you will be mistreated, bumped around, talked about, lied on.

Come on, they called the master of the house Beelzebub, what do they call you?

I heard a Pastor friend of mine, Emerson Wilson, tell a story about when he was visiting a lady from his congregation that was in the hospital.

And while he was there the doctor came in and when Emerson was introduced to the doctor.

The doctor told him yes I have heard a lot about and some of it was good.

So Emerson said well thanks doc, and then he quoted the scripture to the doctor, ”woe be unto you when all men speak well of you”.

Emerson then told the doctor those one that said bad of me have kept the woe off me.
Well the doctor didn’t know what to say to that response.

The doctor actually said what he did to Emerson to hurt him, and Emerson knew it.

The comment “everybody don’t think too much of you” so when Emerson told him “thank you, it is supposed to work that way”.

Because when everybody speaks well of you, woe be unto you.

You can’t be Spiritual and have everybody speak well of you!

Come on, I am not advertising trouble, but you will have it when you live for God!

As sure as we are here, and this is why you need the Holy Spirit again.

Brother it will call you into realms that the flesh can’t stand, the flesh can’t put up with, the flesh will retaliate, without the power of the Holy Spirit in your life, it’s impossible to do it!

Somebody might say, well I don’t believe that.

Come on, when the disciples asked in the Gospels, when the rich young ruler turned away because he had great possessions and the disciples said well there is a clean cut young man.

Most churches would have taken him in and made him treasurer, he would have been teaching a bible class in less than a month!

Man the quality that he had!

But Jesus couldn’t use him!

And when he turned away sorrowful, the disciples said if he can’t be saved, then who can?

And Jesus said, with man it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible!

Brother that just covers the whole category, no matter what comes up, no matter what the circumstance is, with God it is possible to be saved!

And stay saved and live right, He has fixed it that way, just as sure as we are here.

Aman, so the church began in the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but in less than thirty years, many of the congregations had fallen to the flesh.

They were trying to carry on the work of the church in the flesh.

My friend, we need to realize that we grieve the Holy Spirit when we try to live with as little of God’s Spirit as possible!

By failing to obey God’s Word!

Do you know this morning, there are those who claim to be Christians in whom Christianity is not dominant!

Someone might say, what do you mean by that?

They desire to be saved, but beyond that they have no Spiritual longing ness!

They just want to be saved, they don’t want to go to hell, they want to go to Heaven, but they don’t have any real Spiritual longing ness!

That the Holy Spirit stirs up within them to want to be Spiritual, want to win others, want to be a living wittiness for God.

Too many today set in the congregation where Christianity is not dominate just as sure as we are here, they make Christianity questionable in the eye’s of the world.

Envy, strife, division!

My friend, people like that are usually fault finders, and if they can’t find any they will make some!

Envy, jealousy, instead of honor, preferring one another.

Let me throw this in, you can always tell a man’s relationship with God, by his relationship with his fellow man!

Come on, yes sir, and I am not preaching this thing of just gone along with everything.

You have got stands to take!

Definite stands to take in this world!

Aman, sometimes you have to stand against people that you dearly love!

But I am here to tell you, my friend, you will not go out and cut them down, run them down, Aman, knife them in the back, talk about them, try to ruin their character.

I am afraid that there are too many like the old man that said he got saved and the preacher said are you sure you got saved?

You know that you had trouble talking about people.

And the man replied, yes sir I got saved and I know it.

From now on I am not going to gossip about people even if I know that it is so.

Aman, may God help us.

These carnal ones are seldom at peace except when they are at war.

Do you know that there are people, right among us that are enemies to the cause of Christ.

They thrive on trouble!

They love to hear it they love to talk about it, they like to tell others.

They are at the height of their glory when they are talking about somebody that had a mishap or misfortune or fell or done something wrong.

Aman, that’s a bad thing that people need to get rid of that.

God doesn’t want us fighting each other, He wants us fighting the devil.

And when the devil gets in among us and causes us to turn on one another, were in bad shape.

People ask the question all the time, why do I fail so when I desire to do the will of God with my whole heart?

There is only one answer to that.

You are trying to do it in your own strength!

Now let me repeat it.

They say why do I fail, I get up to a certain point, I am really doing good, I am lifted up, and then I fall!

Brother Pruitt why is it?

I wholeheartedly want to serve God.

There is only one answer, you are trusting your own strength.

Well how do you know that you are trusting your own strength?

If you had truly been trusting God, you never would have fallen in the first place!

There is no falling if you truly trust God!

I am going to repeat that, and I will stand right there!

There is no falling!

He is able to keep you from falling and present you faultless before the throne of God!

I am telling you this thing is deceptive!

You can get to the place of trusting you flesh and not really realize it!

And one of the way that you can begin to realize it is when you have these ups and downs and these fallings!

If you are trusting God, you won’t fall!

If you have fallen, it is a definite truth that you are trusting the flesh!

You didn’t really mean to maybe, but the devil got it in on you and you are trusting the flesh!

That is why you fell!

How many can understand that?

Raise your hand!

Aman, there isn’t any falling when you trust God!

Aman, there is not any way just as sure as we are here.

I say if we trust in Jesus we cannot fail.

This perfecting in the flesh what begun in the Spirit runs far deeper through us than many really know.

I bring up the Laodiceans again, they said that they were rich Spiritually and knew not that they were poor, carnal!

Jesus said, repent, be willing to give up yourself completely to the Holy Spirit!

Many consecrate themselves hundreds of times with all intensity, but they get no help!

Why?

Your offering must be accepted of God!

Before the Power comes into your life.

Aman, when it’s accepted of God he will certainly give us the Holy Spirit just as He has promised.

In closing, how can we truly know if we are led of the Holy Spirit?

Quickly, if we are walking in the way of God’s commandments, this is an oracle of the Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:8-10

That Old Testament, that old law was a ministration of death.

But this New Testament is ministration of the Spirit!

8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?

9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.

10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.

God didn’t make us able ministers of any letter, but made us able ministers of the Spirit.

God helped me this morning!

I have pleaded more with God over this very thing, Father, you said that if I was a Church of God Minister, a true one, I would minister the Spirit!

See, I can get up and rattle off the words, I can lay the doctrines down straight!

And you people will go home weak, not get fed a bit.

It’s the Spirit that feeds you!

It’s the Spirit that strengthens your life!

It’s the Spirit that puts the vitamins in it!

It’s the Spirit that makes this the Living Word of God!
So God help us!

We can start with ourselves.

I must answer this question, am I an able minister?

See how we can get off on our thinking?

That man’s able.

Boy he can go from Genesis to Revelation, he is a walking Bible.

Come back to the question.

Do I minister the Spirit?

Do I minister the Spirit?

Is my preaching in demonstration of the Power and Spirit of God?

Has God made me an able Minister of the Spirit?

So first of all we can know if we are walking in the Spirit.

Why?

If we are keeping His commandments.

I remember hearing a pastor friend of mine tell the story about a Pentecostal woman who use to send him letters all the time and would say to him, Brother Wilson I am still waiting.

When are you going to get mature enough to throw the bible away and follow the Holy Ghost?

The morning church, now come on, here’s how the devil can deceive you.

The morning church didn’t have any bible.

They followed the Holy Spirit.

All they had was a few Old Testament scriptures.

They followed the Holy Spirit and they wrote the bible and the bible is their writing.

And he said he always answered and said Aman that’s right.

And when he had them write them down, see, Paul’s going to be very excited over in Heaven when Bro Wilson tells him them letters that you sent to Corinth God put them in the bible.

Come on, he didn’t know that he was writing a bible, he was just writing letters to congregations that needed help.

But the Holy Spirit so infrared his writing that God said, put it right there in the book for every congregation on down through.

That they could get the same help.

Now come on, if the devil can get us to throw away the bible and just follow the Spirit then we have no way what so ever to try the Spirit to know whether it is God leading us or not.

Then people can tell you just like we meet up with them well Brother Pruitt, I know that you can preach pretty sound against false tongue isim but you don’t know that the Holy Ghost told me.

Here we go, there isn’t a way in the world to check a thing like that but to come right back to the Word.

This bible right here is an oracle of the Spirit!

And you only walk in the Spirit as you walk in the light of this Word, that the Spirit has authored and written for us to follow by.

So we can know that we are Spiritual if we are keeping His Commandments.

Second, we can know that we are Spiritual if we are making progress in our Christian experience.

Jesus taught us, that everyone that received Him, He gave Power to become the sons of God and then He went right on in that 1st Chapter of John and talked about His fullness and of His fullness have all of us received.

And then He began to talk about progress in our experience, we go from grace to grace.

God gives us enough here, what for?

To get into that next grace.

And then we get enough grace there to get into that next grace.

Well somebody says, it says grace in glory.

That’s right, grace is glory militant, and glory is grace glorified, or victorious.

We go from grace to grace.

A fellow two weeks ago asked me, do you believe in two works of grace, and I said yes and twenty five hundred more.

From grace to grace, come on, Paul said God put him in the ministry by His grace.

A work of grace he said put him in the ministry.

There is another work of grace!
Healing is a work of grace!

Yes sir, study the grace of healing.

It’s just like the grace of Salvation, there isn’t a one of us that’s worthy to be saved.

There isn’t a one of us that’s worthy to be healed.

You know, they brought that man into Jesus and said here is one who is worthy, I want you to go and heal his son because he’s worthy.

He built us a Synagogue, he has done lot’s of things.

And the poor man said, I am not worthy for You to even come under my roof.

My house is not worthy enough for you, just speak Your Word here and my servant will be made well.

He spoke the Word and got on the way home and they came running and said your servant is well.

Well, what hour did he get better?

Well at such an hour.

That’s the same time the Savior said, he would be made well.

There are none of us worthy to be healed.

No. no, on, it is by His Grace, by His Stripes, by His grace, Aman, he freely bestows Salvation and He freely bestows healing.

I believe in preaching a full gospel, and everybody is afraid of that because the Pentecostals use that word.

A full gospel is salvation for the soul and healing for the body.

The morning church taught a full gospel.

Aman, and the Holy Spirit will still backup a full gospel.

So are we making progress?

Last but not least, how can I know if I am Spiritual?

Am I walking everyday in a way opposed to the flesh?

I am here to tell you right now my flesh and your flesh don’t desire me to be Spiritual.

Aman, I have got to oppose the flesh, there is a body I have got to bring into subjection.

Into subjection to what?

Into subjection to the Spirit!
How do I live for God?

Romans 8:13
13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Are we living opposed to the flesh?

You know what the flesh wants.

There is one thing that the flesh wants in everyone of us, take it easy.

Aman, I’ll speak for you.

Take it easy, take it easy, take it easy.

The flesh will always try to find a place of least resistance.

Flesh will always try to find a way of less responsibility.

Did you ever see such a time when you feel led to ask this one to teach a Sunday School class?

Oh I don’t want that responsibility.

Well would you work and help us on this?

No, I don’t want that responsibility.

The Spirit of God will lead you into more responsible positions in the church, all of the time.

Someone might say, I don’t believe it.

Did you ever watch how He starts?

He will start out with an individual with very small things.

They will develop into something else.

Pretty soon a Sunday School teacher.

Then they are faithful in that.

They hold that responsible position.

Live a Spiritual life.

The next thing you know, God is calling them to preach.

They fill in and preach and it isn’t very long until God has designated a Pastor ship.

Somebody might say what are you talking about?

Just more responsibility.

The Spirit of God will lead you into more responsibility and more responsibility.
But the Flesh is ready to shirk responsibility!

I don’t want that responsibility, I don’t want that responsibility.

If the Apostle Paul would stand before us this morning, what would he say?

Would he say, I cannot speak unto you as Spiritual.

Would he say that?

Friend if he would for your own souls sake and much greater than that, for your family’s sake if you have one.

For the influence of your life’s sake.

Do you know right here this morning what we are determining?

And we are ready for invitation.

What we are determining.

We are not just determining whether you or I are going to serve God.

But we are determining whether dozens of people will be in heaven or not.

Why?

You can’t live for God and be Spiritual, it’s impossible to live for God and be Spiritual without affecting someone!

Aman, now don’t take me wrong.

I am not saying if you are Spiritual you will run out and a dozen will get saved tomorrow.

Get what I said!

It’s impossible to live for God and be Spiritual without affecting someone.

Your light will shine!

Your light will shine!

You will be like a city set on a hill which cannot be hid!

Nothing that the devil can do will keep the light from shinning and reaching the dark areas that need help if we will be Spiritual.

Let us bow our heads.

Father, we have done our best this morning,

We had a struggle this morning and you bought us back to this message of the danger of falling to a level of the flesh.

I know that I am speaking to good people, I believe that I am speaking to people that have no desire to fall to that level.

But my God, we are dealing with such a deceptive thing.

We have got to throw our own thoughts away and go even beyond examining ourselves and ask you Lord, you search me.

You examine me, Lord I want to be Spiritual, I want to live in a demonstration of the Power and Spirit of God.

I want the faith that the Holy Ghost can bring in my life.

I want to live in a Holy manor.

A manor that will shed forth light to those in darkness around me.

Help us this morning, I pray again this morning that you will give us honest hearts, willing minds, may we be ready to obey You, in Jesus Name.

Let us sing Spirit Holy.

The Apostle Paul in Romans the 12th chapter asks us to present our body’s, our very beings as a living sacrifice unto God.

What are you doing it for?

That you may prove what is the good an acceptable Will of God.

There is so much confusion today, about what the Will of God is.

You know that it’s God’s Will to heal.

But He is asking us to present ourselves in such a way that He can take a hold of our lives and we can go out and prove, what is the good and perfect and acceptable Will of God.

This is what it’s for.

But friends we can’t do it unless we keep ourselves presentable and keep ourselves under the leadership of God’s Holy Spirit.

Putting in terms of the Acts, he said tarry until you be endued with the Power of the Holy Spirit from on high.

And after that you will receive the Holy Spirit you will receive the power to start living like Christ.

You are going to be a witness for Christ.

You know that disciples hadn’t gone very long until when the council met he said that these were ignorant and unlearned men.
They couldn’t figure out how they had such wisdom and had such power.

And they finally came to the deduction, that they had been with Jesus.

At Antioch they were so much like Christ that they didn’t know what to call them.

They weren’t Nazarenes, nobody has got a right calling themselves Nazarenes unless they liver in Nazareth.

I ask people that.

Brother Pruitt, I am a Nazarene.

And I say oh, you used to live in Nazareth.

And they answer well no I have always lived in Texas.

And I say, oh you can’t be a Nazarene then, they called Jesus a Nazarene because He used to live in Nazareth.

See these are the works of the flesh.

The Spirit of God never led in anything like that.

At Antioch they acted so much different than all of the religious folks of that day that they called them Christ Yons,Christians.

While we sing one more verse, I don’t want to see people move to an altar but if the Holy Spirit has shown you the light.

If God has been good enough to show you where your struggle really is, your failing really is.

Then you need to repent to God and give up to Him completely.

Let Him have you, He will make out of you what He wants you to be, day by day.

May God bless you if you need help.
 

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